No More Low-Number License Plate Favors

EditorialThe Hartford Courant

Louis Goldberg, a commissioner of the state Department of Motor Vehicles in the 1990s, had an explanation for why some people dearly want low-number license plates. "People will do anything to get these things so they can get that look from a passing car," he told The Courant.

It now appears "that look" will be limited to those already getting it. The current DMV commissioner, Melody Currey, has quietly suspended the decades-old practice of distributing low-number plates as political favors. Good for her.

The practice has periodically been controversial, most recently in 2011, after it was learned that Gov. M. Jodi Rell and her eminence grise, chief of staff M. Lisa Moody, had dished out a bunch of plates to supporters and family members as they left office in late 2010.

Ms. Currey suspended the practice because the low-number plates are more trouble than they are worth, The Courant's Jon Lender reported Sunday.

Also, there just aren't many of these plumlets left on the tree. Only about a dozen of the most coveted numbers — between 1 and 999 — remain to be printed, and extant plates are rarely turned in.

The subject came up because of a bill that would require the DMV to set up an Internet auction for selling the most desired license-plate combinations of letters and numbers to the highest bidders. This of course would be fairer and would generate revenue.

Ms. Currey testified against the bill, saying it would require considerable resources to set up and it would significantly delay a major project at the DMV, a $17 million computer overhaul. There's that, and the fact that it might not be a revenue bonanza. Those awarded low-number plates already pay the same fees, ($94 with a neutral background) that EYEDOC or LAWYER pays.

The commissioner also controls four-digit plates, but the practice has been to give these to people who ask for them without regard to politics. If all the outstanding four-digit plates are sold, they will adorn a tiny percentage of the state's 2.2 million passenger vehicles.

Though Ms. Currey was careful to suspend the program, not end it, this patronage practice looks as if it has, thankfully, about run its course.